1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for providing an advertising service personalized for each user or for each group in an Internet Protocol TV (IPTV).
This work was supported by the IT R&D program of Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC)/Institute for Information Technology Advancement (IITA) [2006-S-064-02, BcN Network Engineering].
2. Description of the Related Art
An Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is a communication/broadcasting integrated service which provides interactive data services while providing a digital channel broadcast as a basic service, through a broadband convergence network (BcN).
Most real-time broadcasting services including existing terrestrial broadcasting have had advertisement profit as a source of profit. However, since terrestrial broadcasting transmits a program to all subscribers who are located in a predetermined region and the subscribers watch the program passively, there is no other way but to transmit the same  advertisements to all the subscribers even though the advertisements can be changed for each program or for each region.
For example, a conventional real-time advertisement providing method based on a multi-cast inserts an advertisement into a broadcasting program channel, and then transmits broadcasting streams including the advertisement in a multicast manner to all subscribers that have selected the broadcasting program channel, regardless of subscriber preferences. However, since the conventional method does not reflect subscriber preferences in broadcasting, the conventional method is suitable for centralized advertising or local advertising, and is similar to advertising used in an existing cable broadcast.
Meanwhile, even if an existing real-time broadcasting service is provided through an IPTV, advertisement profit will still be a major source of profit. In particular, since consumer preferences can be measured in various ways due to interactivity, which is an important characteristic of the IPTV, target marketing of advertising services is possible.
In an IPTV service which can distinguish users based on authentication, since an advertisement provider can easily obtain information about user preferences, the advertisement provider can provide advertisements personalized according to the user preferences on the basis of the information about the user preferences. However, since real-time broadcasting of IPTV uses a multicast method to transfer content to a plurality of subscribers, the content has to be transformed using a unicast method in order to provide advertisements personalized according to an existing method.
That is, a conventional real-time advertisement providing method inserts advertisements personalized according to user preferences into a program which is transmitted by a multicast method, and creates and transmits the program as independent unicast streams. The user preferences can be classified into classes, such as income, age, family configuration, taste.
However, since the conventional method requires installation of an advertisement server near a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM), a large number of  advertisement servers have to be installed, and thus costs for installation and management increase.
Also, although an advertisement server is installed on or over a concentration switch in order to reduce the number of advertisement servers, due to the characteristics of real-time broadcasting in which a plurality of subscribers watch the same program provided on a channel a plurality of broadcasting streams having the same format have to occupy a link, which causes unnecessary waste of resources.